Former Trump campaign adviser Rick Gates is finalizing a plea deal with special counsel Robert Mueller’s office, indicating he’s poised to cooperate in the investigation, according to sources familiar with the case.

Gates has already spoken to Mueller’s team about his case and has been in plea negotiations for about a month. He’s had what criminal lawyers call a “Queen for a Day” interview, in which a defendant answers any questions from the prosecutors’ team, including about his own case and other potential criminal activity he witnessed.

Gates’ cooperation could be another building block for Mueller in a possible case against President Donald Trump or key members of his team.

Once a plea deal is in place, Gates would become the third known cooperator in Mueller’s sprawling probe into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. It would also increase the pressure to cooperate on Gates’ co-defendant Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman, who has pleaded not guilty to Mueller’s indictment and is preparing for a trial on alleged financial crimes unrelated to the campaign. Gates pleaded not guilty on October 30 alongside Manafort.

“Nobody (who’s charged) goes in to provide incriminating information to the government unless it’s part of plea negotiations,” said a criminal defense attorney who represents a witness in the case. In a Queen for a Day interview, a defendant can typically admit to crimes with little additional consequences, unless he or she lies.

Lawyers for President Trump have advised him against sitting down for a wide-ranging interview with the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, according to four people briefed on the matter, raising the specter of a monthslong court battle over whether the president must answer questions under oath.

His lawyers are concerned that the president, who has a history of making false statements and contradicting himself, could be charged with lying to investigators. Their stance puts them at odds with Mr. Trump, who has said publicly and privately that he is eager to speak with Mr. Mueller as part of the investigation into possible ties between his associates and Russia’s election interference, and whether he obstructed justice.

Mr. Trump’s decision about whether to speak to prosecutors, expected in the coming weeks, will shape one of the most consequential moments of the investigation. Refusing to sit for an interview opens the possibility that Mr. Mueller will subpoena the president to testify before a grand jury, setting up a court fight that would drastically escalate the investigation and could be decided by the Supreme Court.

Rejecting an interview with Mr. Mueller also carries political consequences. It would be certain to prompt accusations that the president is hiding something, and a court fight could prolong the special counsel inquiry, casting a shadow over Republicans as November’s midterm elections approach or beyond into the president’s re-election campaign.

But John Dowd, the longtime Washington defense lawyer hired last summer to represent Mr. Trump in the investigation, wants to rebuff an interview request, as do Mr. Dowd’s deputy, Jay Sekulow, and many West Wing advisers, according to the four people.

Trump’s interview with Mueller would be a giant perjury trap, because Trump lies while hardly realizing he’s doing it and can’t keep his stories straight, or doesn’t want to.

Lying to Ken Starr if what got Bill Clinton impeached. Trump would be wise to avoid the session.

People with knowledge of the investigation said it could last at least another year — pointing to ongoing cooperation from witnesses such as former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos and former national security adviser Michael Flynn, as well as a possible trial of two former Trump campaign officials. The special counsel’s office has continued to request new documents related to the campaign, and members of Mueller’s team have told others they expect to be working through much of 2018, at a minimum.

President Trump is under the impression things are going to wrap up soon. He will be disappointed.

When pressed by two advisers to take the matter more seriously and asked why he is so confident in his lawyers, Trump brushed off the concerns. “He is living in his own world,” the person said, predicting that Trump would erupt at some point in 2018 if the probe continued to drag on.

Working in Trump’s favor is that Mueller supposedly gets that he shouldn’t be hamstringing a president and should at least clear Trump as soon as possible, even if the overall investigation continues.

But he’ll have human nature tugging him the other way. With unlimited time and unlimited resources, Mueller and his Democrat-heavy, anti-Trump investigators will continually be coming up with new morsels of information and think, “Gosh, let’s take a bite out of that! Delicious!”

Republicans have every reason, each one given to them by Mueller’s own team, to suspect bias in the process and are correctly broadcasting their concerns to the American people. This has a couple of effects.

According to Alan Dershowitz, Meuller is very concerned with his reputation. He no doubt chafes at criticism that his probe is biased, and the GOP attacks may prod him to rule in Trump’s favor on close calls. “The great Red Auerbach, former coach of the Boston Celtics, once told me that when he screams loudly at officials, he generally gets the next close call in his favor,” Dershowitz writes.

The attacks on Mueller also could set Trump up to try to justify issuing pardons or even firing Mueller. But the latter would be a bad political choice, not only because it will energize the Democratic base even further, but because it will give Mueller’s investigators every reason to leak every salacious, unconfirmed detail they’ve managed to uncover, including stuff completely unrelated to the investigation. And I’m certain they’ve come up with a lot. The drip drip will go on right through Election Day, 2020. And some moderates and even conservatives may be concerned that the rule of law has been undermined.

This probe was conjured up out of thin air. The $7 million it cost – by now we’re probably closer to $10 million – was from something more tangible: your bank account. According to Fox News: Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office revealed Tuesday that the first few months of his Russia investigation cost taxpayers a… Continue Reading

The press can hardly conceal its glee that after a few days of bad press for Hillary Clinton, who paid for Russian dirt against Donald Trump, they now have some nobody named George Papadopoulos in their corner against the president. The Washington Post exults that there are “several big, juicy questions emanating from the former… Continue Reading

I don’t get it. Somone nobody never heard of, as they say in Joisey, Rod Rosenstein, decided that what the Russia election influence case demands is an investigator who is now going to spend years poking around the Trump administration looking for wrongdoing and crippling, or at least harming, the ability of the White House to… Continue Reading

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